Iowa Football: Way-too-early game-by-game predictions for 2018
Iowa makes their final road trip of the 2018 season to Champaign to take on Lovie Smith‘s Fighting Illini. The Hawkeyes took down Illinois rather easily last season in a 45-16 win on homecoming.
Lovie Smith enters his third season as head coach at Illinois, and quite frankly, he hasn’t accomplished anything. He holds a 5-19 record through two seasons and there really isn’t any indication that his team will begin to perform better any time soon. The Illini have found their starting quarterback in Jeff George Jr., the son of former Illini and NFL quarterback Jeff George.
There hasn’t been much of a series between these two schools since the conference expansion in 2011, but they have played the last 4 years, all of them resulting in Iowa wins. In fact, the last win Illinois has gotten over Iowa was back in 2008. The Hawkeyes then went on to upset then #3 Penn State the following week.
There is no reason to believe Iowa will not once again, dominate the Illini. Iowa is better at every facet of the game and it will show in this ballgame.